No one seems to mind that term is starting late at Tripoli University this year. It's not every summer vacation, after all, that records the triumph of a revolution, and there are problems to sort out – not least the huge number of young men toting machine guns on campus – before the students start streaming in past the "down with Gaddafi" and "Free Libya" slogans.

Staff and new intake alike are preparing for a freshers' week with a difference. "In the circumstances I think we can be forgiven if this term is a bit delayed," says administrator Khalifa Shakreen. "Things are changing so fast."

For the first time in 42 years the university has the chance to be a normal academic institution. "Until now we had the form of a university but not the function," says Sami Khaskusha, a political scientist. "We fed young people garbage. [Muammar] Gaddafi just used this place to boost his cult of personality and bolster the regime. It did nothing for Libyan society."

Omar Tajouri, doing a master's degree in international law, wants better teaching, cleaner administration and, above all, freedom. His ambition – unthinkable just months ago – is to specialise in human rights. "Gaddafi's regime was founded on ignorance," he says. "They were the enemies of education and of students."

Signs of change are everywhere. Last term the university was still named al-Fateh ("The Conqueror") after Gaddafi's 1969 revolution. Now billboards advertising the rules of the sinister revolutionary committees have been defaced. Maps of Libya have been altered to remove the word "Jamahiriya" – the unlamented "state of the masses" presided over by the now fugitive "brother leader". The ubiquitous green flags have gone.

Faisal Krekshi, a Belfast-trained gynaecologist who helped co-ordinate clandestine preparations for the Tripoli uprising, has been appointed acting president instead of the old regime placeman awaiting investigation. "There is a new spirit in the university and in Libyan society," he says, "but I fear expectations are too high."

Anxious to quickly demonstrate some tangible benefits, he plans to provide free transport to and from the campus. And the new independent student union has been given computers and other equipment confiscated from the revolutionary committees, whose members are lying low or are in detention.

If the sense of freedom is intoxicating, painful memories have not faded. In the 1970s and 1980s students were forced to watch public hangings next to the medical faculty to punish dissent and inspire fear. Purges and book bannings were common. Executions stopped years ago but other abuses continued: two weeks ago a secret underground chamber was discovered under a lecture hall. It contained a bedroom, a Jacuzzi, and a fully-equipped gynaecological operating theatre that was used for officially sanctioned but illegal abortions.

Repression was routine under Gaddafi. But many say the corruption and cronyism were as bad. The highly qualified Krekshi only got his teaching job because he had treated the wife of a revolutionary committee member.

Huda Shadi, preparing a thesis on linguistics, was told she could not study English because she had good marks in sciences and was only able to switch through the intervention of a friend in the university administration. "The whole system was corrupt," she muses. "You had to do what the people with the files told you to do. It wasn't about what the student wanted. It was dictatorial – like everything else in Libya."

Khaskusha describes being questioned by the revolutionary committee after telling an international relations class on the global north-south divide about the issue of corruption in southern (developing) countries. He was ordered to clarify to his students that he had not been referring to Libya. "It was terrible," he says. "You had to act like a robot and simply repeat what they said. If you spoke your mind you would be classified as a counter-revolutionary."

The sprawling campus is pleasant enough but badly dilapidated. It is also strikingly relaxed: couples – many women wearing headscarves – walk hand-in-hand through leafy passageways that offer shelter from the baking heat.

But facilities and academic standards, staff say, urgently need improving. Curriculum reform is a big issue though the interim government – the National Transitional Council – has scrapped previously compulsory nonsense such as Gaddafi's "universal theory" and "Green Book studies" – a speciality of the University of Tarhouna, south of Tripoli.

Improving language teaching is expected to be an early focus: many young and middle-aged Libyans speak nothing but Arabic because of abysmal standards and a formal ban on "imperialist" tongues in one of Gaddafi's zanier periods in the 1980s.

Financial resources were never the problem – true generally of a country blessed with vast oil wealth and a relatively small population. "The priorities were always providing funds for the student union so they could jump up and down and declare their allegiance to the Gaddafi regime," says Hussein al-Ageli, who runs the university language centre. "Proposals for spending on the library or other improvements were just brushed aside."

Now, in a world without Gaddafi, exciting possibilities beckon. "If Libya is going to move forward and people can understand the new liberties and build a civil society, the universities are where it has to happen," Ageli says. "We must raise standards and play a role in scientific research. We are supposed to be the backbone of the intelligentsia."

Law student Tajouri expects things will improve. "But it will take time," he admits. "This is a country which has to be built from scratch."